Investment in business travel helps your firm expand its customer base and generate more revenue. But business travel management is different from your core business processes. Company travel software helps your firm increase the ROI of business travel by streamlining and automating the complex and multistep process.
You can automate the cost-intensive business process end-to-end by investing in the right travel management software. The software will help your employees accomplish business travel goals without increasing the average business trip costs.
Also, you can evaluate the success of the travel management system by considering several factors and using multiple benefits. Here are a set of important metrics you should use to measure the business travel software’s ROI accurately.
10 Metrics to Measure the Performance and Success of Company Travel Software
1. Travel Policy Compliance
Employees often increase the average business trip costs by booking out-of-policy travel products. In addition to keeping travel policies accessible, the travel management software minimizes the instances of travel policy violations.
Hence, you should use the number of travel policy violations as a critical metric while measuring the software’s ROI. The metric will help you check if the software shows and recommends only in-policy travel products to employees.
2. Travel Booking Time and Efficiency
Most employees complete business travel bookings from the office. Their productivity is impacted when they spend more time choosing and booking essential business travel products like flights, accommodations, and car rentals.
Leading company travel solutions enable employees to compare, choose, and book travel products in minutes. But you should track and consider the average time employees spend on business travel booking while measuring the software’s success.
3. Early Travel Bookings
Employees often escalate travel costs by delaying business travel booking. The travel management system makes them book business trips early by accelerating the business travel approval process and sending automated reminders.
The software increases the ROI of business travel by increasing the duration between booking dates and travel dates. Hence, consider last-minute bookings done by employees while measuring the performance of the company travel software.
4. Cancellation Fees and Penalty
Several studies suggest business travelers cancel and reschedule booking more frequently than work travelers. Your firm has to pay cancellation fees and penalties when employees cancel or reschedule bookings.
Leading travel management systems help your firm control costs by making employees book fully-flexible tickets and reducing cancellation fees. But you must check if your choice of software is reducing additional costs despite regular booking changes.
5. Business Travel Experience
Your firm cannot make any domestic or international business trip successful without boosting employees’ business travel experiences. The software improves the business travel experience by allowing employees to book their preferred travel products without violating organizational travel policies.
But you must ensure employees can book travel products that keep them safe and stress-free during business trips. Also, check if the software meets employees’ expectations and needs by extending and diversifying travel inventories.
6. Negotiated Savings
Firms often have to negotiate and network with travel suppliers to get corporate rates and discounts. The company travel management enables employees to book flights, hotels, and other business travel products at lower than market rates.
Also, it helps them save money on business travel booking by discovering special offers and deals. You can measure the financial performance of the software based on the decrease in travel booking costs after its implementation.
7. Duty of Care Compliance
Your firm needs to invest in duty-of-care resources to ensure the safety and security of each business traveler. The duty-of-care solution provided by the travel management system helps your firm meet legal and moral responsibilities without escalating costs.
Leading company travel software providers enhance the safety and security of work travelers by partnering with global health and security risk management firms. Hence, you should check how many employees get emergency assistance using the software while assessing its performance.
8. Travel Issue Resolution Time
Company travel software providers provide travel information and assistance to your employees by offering 24/7 support. Your employees can access the software to access the required travel information and resolve various travel conflicts.
But you must check if the software helps employees resolve common travel issues like flight cancellations and rebooking without hassle and delay. This metric will help you persuade the provider to resolve common travel incidents faster.
9. Travel Expense Processing Time
Employees often experience stress when your finance team takes more time to reimburse travel experiences. The delay in travel expense reimbursements makes employees experience stress and feel unmotivated after business trips.
Hence, you should measure the time your finance team requires to process travel expense claims using the travel management system. The metric will help you identify issues that impact work travelers adversely by increasing travel expense processing time.
10. Travel and Expense Data Consolidation
The company travel software stores employees’ travel and expense data in a central location. Also, it shares the data with other enterprise systems integrated with it. The unification helps you analyze and review travel data by generating reports.
Also, the integration results in keeping the data up-to-date across business solutions. But you should consider the accuracy of the data and efficiency of the data unification process while measuring ROI to facilitate informed decision-making.
Conclusion
Your firm can invest in company travel software to increase the ROI of business travel through automation. Also, you can measure the ROI of the travel management system using a slew of metrics. But you can increase the ROI only by implementing the right software.
For instance, you can boost travel management automation by choosing an integrated travel and expense management system. Likewise, you can reduce infrastructural overheads by implementing a cloud-based travel management solution.
Hence, your automation strategy should focus on choosing and implementing the right corporate travel management software. Opting for software with robust features and tools is essential while leveraging Industry 4.0 technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics.
Also Read: Choosing the Perfect Software Solution for Your Travel and Hospitality Business
